Each of the six Star Wars: The Old Republic classes pack 200 hours of gameplay, EA has revealed - excluding crafting, raiding and "the multiplayer".

EA Games boss Frank Gibeau described the in-development MMO as "gigantic", although he wishes the game hadn't cost quite so much money to make.

"I don't pay much attention to that talk [of a $300 million budget] - I get a lot of questions from analysts and press about it," Gibeau told GamesIndustry.biz.

"What I try and concentrate on is, is it a good game and is it ready to go?

"You look at a game that has 200 hours of gameplay for each of the six classes, and that doesn't include the crafting, the raids, the multiplayer. It's vast. It's a gigantic game. And that costs money. But when you get one of these launched they persist for a long period of time."

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Glad to clarify. Please bear with me, though, as it can be hard when we're talking about story and story length. So let's start with a few rules for how we tend to talk about it at Bioware:

First: the whole critical path of the game is the length. The walking, the combat, the travel on your ship, world quests, everything you'd have to do to come out the other end the right level. When we say the story of Chapter 1 is X long we do not mean if you somehow took all the conversations and ran them together. Sneaking through the Death Star and shooting stormtroopers was just as much of Luke's story as talking about going and saving the princess. So all the content you're expected to do goes in there. What doesn't go in? Warzones, crafting, socializing, auction house, space game, etc (yes, you could skip world quests and do Warzone or space game quests or Heroics for XP instead but swaps like that tend to more or less even out). Anything not required to level up is outside the estimate.

Second: Your mileage may vary. When we talk about the length of the game at all, we keep it vague for the important reason that people burn through content at different rates. The numbers we're using today are based on best case estimates from hundreds of people playing through Chapter 1. Some people were faster, some people were much, much, much slower as they apparently not just stopped to smell the flowers but had their CCs pick some, studied them, made adrenals out of them and then decided to sit by the roadside and consider what they'd done.

Third: This may change somewhat before ship. Difficulty has been going up in the mid and late leveling game to create real, RPG-style combat challenges. This makes the game longer. Death penalties have been going down. This makes the game shorter. But we have a general idea where we want it to end up and I think it's safe now to make some broad statements.

Okay, with all that out of the way, let me clarify. I was speaking of the a single average first time playthrough of a single class's Chapter 1 being more than twice the length of a single average first time playthrough of the entirety of the original Knights of the Old Republic. Chapter 2 and 3 are each somewhat shorter than Chapter 1 (which are extended by the Origin and Capitol worlds experience) but still pretty darn big.

If we are talking about playthroughs of all the classes we're well into four digit hours but even one class is in the plural hundreds. Anything more specific is going to get me into trouble and honestly will just make me look silly when one guild makes it their all encompassing mission to beat the leveling game in a single marathon session then Photoshop their completion time onto a shocked looking picture of my face and spread it all over the interwebs.

Hope that helps!
Daniel Erickson

For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson

It is a sign of a defeated man, to attack at ones character in the face of logic and reason- Me

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Trying to estimate gameplay time in mmos is such a fail that im quite surprised anyone believed in them

But yeah, I surely have not played for 200 hours to reach max level/end of plot

They knew. What they did was add in all the generic quests. All the side-quests for the companions. Then laid how long it'd take to do each one in the least efficient method possible -- one at a time, flying back-and-forth and back-and-forth. Which, of course, virtually nobody does...

This isn't, BTW, an EA issue. This announced time-padding has happened in every BioWare game since Jade Empire. BioWare said 40+ hours for that game. The forums were full of really ticked off people because it really took between 18 and 22 hours to do the whole game (original X-Box release). I didn't mind so much, save that of the 20 hours it took me to complete the game, probably one-third to one-half was pointless running around in areas...

There response was 'we never said that.' When people linked what they said, they locked the threads. When people repeatedly linked what they said, they banned them from the forums.

They also said Jade Empire was "X-Box Exclusive" and advertised it that way. Then, a few years later, needed the cash so they dumped it on the PC market. The forums were full of really ticked off PC gamers, some of whom went out and bought X-Boxes so they could play the game only to have BioWare shiv them...

You know what BioWare said? "We never said we wouldn't release it on PC..." I guess they need a dictionary, because exclusive does have defintion which includes "restricted in distribution."

So, don't blame EA. It's been like this for quite some time and Jade Empire is just one game of many where they lied about the product they couldn't deliver. I could have picked NWN and the failed 'real-time, interactive dungeon master' ability they never delivered, but, instead gave us crappy modding tools and little functionality for real-time. I could point out what they PROMISED and what they delivered were light years apart. I could point out that one-half of Kotor was padded running-around to stretch out a 20-hour game. Same with ME1 and ME2...

Anwya, BioWare is no longer that cool game company that made cool, in-depth games with significant options and engaging stories way back in the late 1990s, like Baldur's Gate, and treating its fanboy community with respect. I remember that Company. I was there when that Company was that Company. When they actually gave a damn.

Now it's another corporate crap-fest run by suits and using flash and gimmicks over substance to make its rail-crpg games. And thinking you'll get any kind of honesty from BioWare... NO.

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Glad to clarify. Please bear with me, though, as it can be hard when we're talking about story and story length. So let's start with a few rules for how we tend to talk about it at Bioware:

First: the whole critical path of the game is the length. The walking, the combat, the travel on your ship, world quests, everything you'd have to do to come out the other end the right level. When we say the story of Chapter 1 is X long we do not mean if you somehow took all the conversations and ran them together. Sneaking through the Death Star and shooting stormtroopers was just as much of Luke's story as talking about going and saving the princess. So all the content you're expected to do goes in there. What doesn't go in? Warzones, crafting, socializing, auction house, space game, etc (yes, you could skip world quests and do Warzone or space game quests or Heroics for XP instead but swaps like that tend to more or less even out). Anything not required to level up is outside the estimate.

Second: Your mileage may vary. When we talk about the length of the game at all, we keep it vague for the important reason that people burn through content at different rates. The numbers we're using today are based on best case estimates from hundreds of people playing through Chapter 1. Some people were faster, some people were much, much, much slower as they apparently not just stopped to smell the flowers but had their CCs pick some, studied them, made adrenals out of them and then decided to sit by the roadside and consider what they'd done.

Third: This may change somewhat before ship. Difficulty has been going up in the mid and late leveling game to create real, RPG-style combat challenges. This makes the game longer. Death penalties have been going down. This makes the game shorter. But we have a general idea where we want it to end up and I think it's safe now to make some broad statements.

Okay, with all that out of the way, let me clarify. I was speaking of the a single average first time playthrough of a single class's Chapter 1 being more than twice the length of a single average first time playthrough of the entirety of the original Knights of the Old Republic. Chapter 2 and 3 are each somewhat shorter than Chapter 1 (which are extended by the Origin and Capitol worlds experience) but still pretty darn big.

If we are talking about playthroughs of all the classes we're well into four digit hours but even one class is in the plural hundreds. Anything more specific is going to get me into trouble and honestly will just make me look silly when one guild makes it their all encompassing mission to beat the leveling game in a single marathon session then Photoshop their completion time onto a shocked looking picture of my face and spread it all over the interwebs.

Hope that helps!
Daniel Erickson

lol. They lied. It takes most people, (i.e. pretty much everyone but the hopeless) without skipping quests or dialog, about 50-hours.

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200 hours should be considered an "outside estimate" is mostly aimed at the more casual players, anyone whose been in gaming for more than a year knows that it is rather a simple matter to blow through a game in weeks if they so choose.

Games that are "artificially long" by way of huge time-sinks earn their very own brand of hatred (see, another f**king Korean/Chinese/Japanese Grinder)

there are 8 classes, 2 factions, want to get the full unmitigated experience? Go level all 16 & get all your monies worth.

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Yall are so critical of this game but its pretty fun. I mean yea i would hate something too if i completely took for granted and ignored the big seller for the game (the story). Racing to 50 and staying negative? End game sucks when a game first comes out to act surprised by this fact....

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Because they took it for granted that everyone would listen to every single dialogue of every single quest.

Unfortunately most of us abused the space bar more often than not, since it is a MMO, listening to minutes of pointless dialogue of pointless quests, that was never going to be the main activity

So:

200 hours without spacebar

50 hours with spacebar (only because people made the effort to listen to the main story dialogues)

They didn't lie, they were just economical with the truth

I didn't space bar, I didn't race to 50, I crafted, I explored, I hunted datachrons and I was nowhere near the 200hrs for story quest. I only wish I had written down when I checked /played @ 50, but I do remember me and my guildies saying no way to 200hrs played.

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Sadly i'm not surprised people believed that garbage. People seem to think that Bioware is capable of doing no harm. That they're basically jesus embodied in a game company or some shit. Its absolutely disgusting to me the brand loyalty people have for that company.

I'm surprised the BWD hasn't jumped on this thread yet. They're probably still trying to sort out what ultra illogical, fallacy ridden resposne they're going to hammer down our throats ad nauseum until we give up trying to reason with them.

"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."

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Originally posted by Hrimnir

Sadly i'm not surprised people believed that garbage. People seem to think that Bioware is capable of doing no harm. That they're basically jesus embodied in a game company or some shit. Its absolutely disgusting to me the brand loyalty people have for that company.

I'm surprised the BWD hasn't jumped on this thread yet. They're probably still trying to sort out what ultra illogical, fallacy ridden resposne they're going to hammer down our throats ad nauseum until we give up trying to reason with them.

I am a Bioware fan of the first hour, Baldurs Gate is still one of my top 5 RPG, I also own every Bioware game.

Yet I can't deny that with DA2 and Swtor I noticed the start of a descending curve.

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Originally posted by ste2000

Originally posted by Hrimnir

Sadly i'm not surprised people believed that garbage. People seem to think that Bioware is capable of doing no harm. That they're basically jesus embodied in a game company or some shit. Its absolutely disgusting to me the brand loyalty people have for that company.

I'm surprised the BWD hasn't jumped on this thread yet. They're probably still trying to sort out what ultra illogical, fallacy ridden resposne they're going to hammer down our throats ad nauseum until we give up trying to reason with them.

I am a Bioware fan of the first hour, Baldurs Gate is still one of my top 5 RPG, I also own every Bioware game.

Yet I can't deny that with DA2 and Swtor I noticed the start of a descending curve.

Since Bioware has been bought by EA, it is not the same Bioware.

Sad but true

I don't think we can entirely blame EA here. Bioware has been going downhill for a while. DA1 wasn't like it was supposed to be either. And Mass Effect... its not even an RPG much anymore.

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Actually the game has 16 classes. They just say 8 so they have an excuse for not having made a story for half of them.

if yo uplay a Gunslinger (Smuggler) and you want to try a Scoundrel (Smuggler) which is an entirely diffferent gameplay experience, you actually have to re-roll and replay the same story all over again. So yeah, 16 classes. 8 Storylines. Whatever hours.

"I’d rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."